The program got off to a rocky start with the Treasury Department and Small Business Administration failing to release a final version of the rules until hours before the emergency fund launched.
That has small business owners including Bill Griffith worried. Griffith estimates that his company, Georgia-based Innovative Machining Solutions, would be eligible for a $50,000 loan under the program, helping him keep his five employees.
He has repeatedly called his longtime bank, Wells Fargo. But the San Francisco bank didn’t start accepting applications until Saturday, the day after the program launched, and then on Monday announced it had already received enough interest to allocate the $10 billion it set aside for the program. Wells Fargo can’t lend more because the Federal Reserve put a cap on its size after a series of consumer abuses rattled regulators’ confidence in the bank.
Michelle Loewinger, a dentist in D.C., closed her office last month and laid off her three employees. With a loan, Loewinger said, she could rehire her employees and cover rent for office building. She checked Wells Fargo’s website once an hour for days waiting to put in a formal application. When she had trouble getting through, she tried Bank of America but learned she didn’t qualify because she didn’t have a business account there. “No other banks will take it unless you have an account,” she said.Now, Loewinger worries she that since Wells Fargo isn’t taking more applications she could be locked out of the emergency fund all together.
The program got off to a rocky start last Friday. The Treasury Department and Small Business Administration didn’t release the final rules until a few hours before it launched. Many of the country’s largest banks were still reviewing the rules as thousands of small business owners began applying.
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